


Double Shift

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Bay Movies)
Genre: Fast Food, Food Issues, Gen, Good Older Sibling Leonardo (TMNT), I'm Bad At Tagging, Male-Female Friendship, Self-Hatred, and it makes casey really sad, thats pretty much it, the turtles get their dinner out of a bin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 03:31:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19417600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: They were on their way home after one of their more recent patrols with nothing but a few cuts and scrapes among them when Mikey stopped in his steady sprint and back-tracked towards a large rubbish bin. “Uh,” Casey began when he watched the turtle pull out a crushed pizza box and when he opened the lid, there were a few pieces of dirty, mouldy pizza inside. “What are you doing?”“Hunting for dinner, dude,” Mikey dived back into the dumpster, his legs sticking up in the air. The commotion had attracted the attention of the other turtles and they stopped running to join Casey and Mikey at the bin. Mikey came back up with something wrapped in paper. “Look, Leo- we might be able to get some things out of this.”





	Double Shift

**Author's Note:**

> I saw someone make a comment about 'the ninja turtles don't have good pizza because they live in a sewer and they probably have to get all their food from dumpsters because they don't really have any money" and this I immediately thought of this sO ENJOY THIS PIECE OF CRAP.

It had taken a while after Casey had met the turtles to finally join them in their nightly patrols, wearing nothing but a hockey mask with his gym bag strapped to his back and some pads on his knees from when he would undoubtedly fall over. He wasn’t sure why it had taken him so long- they all obviously had the same interests and they liked each other well enough, so it wasn’t too difficult to connect the dots.

They were on their way home after one of their more recent patrols with nothing but a few cuts and scrapes among them when Mikey stopped in his steady sprint and back-tracked towards a large rubbish bin. “Uh,” Casey began when he watched the turtle pull out a crushed pizza box and when he opened the lid, there were a few pieces of dirty, mouldy pizza inside. “What are you doing?”

“Hunting for dinner, dude,” Mikey dived back into the dumpster, his legs sticking up in the air. The commotion had attracted the attention of the other turtles and they stopped running to join Casey and Mikey at the bin. Mikey came back up with something wrapped in paper. “Look, Leo- we might be able to get some things out of this.”

To his credit, Leo held back the sigh that was obviously trying to force its way past his lips. “Mikey, we don’t have time for this,” he said gently, which Casey was not expecting, and waved at the sky. “The sun’s coming up. People could come down here any minute and we’ll be spotted.”

“But we might be able to find dinner for the next two days with the things in here!” Mikey protested, waving the fly coated and paper wrapped tortilla _thing_ under Leo’s nose.

Leo looked like he wanted to protest, but he gave in to Mikey’s big doe eyes and shoved the foul-smelling once-food item away from his nose. “Fine. Donnie, help him search. Raph, you’re on look-out. I’ll go scout ahead for the nearest drain to get us home.”

As Donnie dropped the bag he was carrying to join his brother in the search through the dumpster, Raph took a position so he could see both streets coming into their little nook and the direction Leo had gone while Casey watched them all dumbfounded, his hockey stick hanging loosely in his fingers. Mikey stuck his head out of the bin to grin at him. “You gonna lend a hand?”

“Uh… no.” Casey took a step back when Donnie flicked a banana-peal over his shoulder to land near Casey’s feet. “What are you guys actually doing?”

“We’re looking for food,” Mikey explained, waving a dirty hand above them at the large apartment complex that the bin obviously belonged to. “This place must be loaded with things. Look at how many people must live here. This place is huge!” Over his shoulder, Donnie sent Casey a sympathetic wince and kept digging. “We don’t eat all that often so finding places like this is a gold mine.”

Casey almost felt like bashing his head against the closest brick wall. By his feet, a substantial pile of food-based rubbish was beginning to accumulate. “Don’t you just pay that pizza guy to stand on the street corner and hold a pizza out for you? I’ve seen you do it before.”

“We can’t do that every night.” Mikey snorted. “We’re not loaded with money. We just use what we find. Usually what blows down into the sewers, but it’s normally enough for a few pizzas. It’s not like millionaires drop their wallets down the drains all the time.”

He looked to Raph for his help but it was obvious that Casey wasn’t going to get any from the turtle who was taking his job as look-out very seriously, eyes darting at every possible sound, his arms crossed and his sai’s in his fists, watching the entrance. Donnie pulled away from the bin with a final grunt and wiped his hands on his pants, righting his glasses when they were clean enough. “Too bad we didn’t find any hand-sanitizer,” he mumbled as he stepped away. “I hope you know that you’re carrying all this home on your own.”

Mikey continued to look for another moment after his brother before he too pulled away and crouched down to begin to pile the food-like things into his arms. “Fine by me, I can probably handle it.” When Casey glanced down to assess how much there was to carry, he was a little surprised at how scarce there was when compared to how big the complex was. Defiantly limited enough for Mikey to carry on his own.

Soon enough, Leo made his back to their little group, a little out breath and wild-eyed. “There’s a drain a few blocks away. We need to hurry- people are coming.” He nodded at Mikey and his armful of food items and started running back the way he came, the others following behind him.

When they made it back to the lair and given Master Splinter a rundown of everything that had happened during their patrol, they gathered all the food Mikey had collected from the bin and placed it on the table, using chipped porcelain and paper plates to lay it all out. Half-eaten and mouldy food made the room smell foul, even worse than it usually did, but that might have just been because Casey had gotten used to the scent of the sewer. Flies and bugs crawled around over the items and he grimaced as the turtles began to eagerly unwrap them. To his dismay, they began to tear apart the gross, old food and ate it like it was a freshly made pizza. “How the hell are you not getting sick from this?” He asked after a while, feeling a little sick himself.

“Dude,” Raph said with a mouthful of food. “We’re _giant mutant turtles_.”

Donnie kicked him under the table and Raph glared at him, but fell silent and let his brother elaborate. “It’s a little hard to explain,” Donnie said as he picked a blue furry section of pizza off his slice and put it in the bin. “But we’re much bigger and stronger than you are. Our constitution is not the same as humans, and we can endure much more than you can, even if that does mean dealing with old food. It takes a lot to make us sick.”

Mikey moved a hand to offer some of the gunk to Casey but Leo slapped it away before it could come too close, which the human was very grateful about. The smell alone was starting to make him nauseous, he didn’t want to think about what would happen if he actually ate some. “There might be some old takeaway in the fridge.” Leo offered shyly as if knowing the answer before the question had even left his mouth.

“No thanks,” Casey said, trying not to gag as Raph inhaled some sort of pastry dish, mould and all. Casey was sure that he saw something crawling across it before it had entered Raph’s mouth and he was right if that answering _crunch!_ that sounded nothing like old pastry had anything to do with it. “I have to get back home- I promised April that I’d help her put her new bookcase together and I’ve got work tonight. I’ll see you guy’s tomorrow?”

They raised their so-called meal still clutched in their hands at Casey who had saluted them, stood up and now made his way back towards the very large exit and out through the nearest sewer cap and up onto the street.

Casey was telling the truth when he said he had to help April build a shelving unit for her apartment. He just wasn’t supposed to be there until Wednesday, but because it was Sunday, he knew that she would be there.

He didn’t speak the whole time he was assembling the bookcase, too busy with the constant reading of frustrating instructions and the feeling of the screwdriver rolling between his fingers, his thoughts a heated angry burst of confusion and disappointment and self-loathing and he put all that energy into assembling the best damn Ikea bookcase that April had ever seen. It had only taken him a couple of hours, and April was just about to order takeout.

April knew him well enough by now to know that there was something on his mind so before he had even stood up and dusted his hand off and declared that he was done, she was standing in front of him with her arms crossed and her foot tapping. “There’s something bothering you and there’s no way that you can tell me otherwise because I _know_ you Casey Jones and you look like you’re about to break one of my vases, which I will not stand for.”

Slowly, Casey let out a breath he hadn’t know he was holding. “The guys… our friends downstairs… what do you think they live off of?”

“You mean the turtles?” April raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know. Kung-Fu. Kicking ass. Death-defying stunts. Sneaking out to go and watch a basketball game when they really shouldn’t.”

Slightly annoyed, Casey shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m being serious.”

“No, I don’t know what they live off but I have a feeling that you’re about to tell me,” April sounded like she too was getting annoyed, though Casey couldn’t imagine what for. She hadn’t done anything and there was no way that he could be annoying her… was there? “You always do this. You expect me to know every thought that comes to your head. So maybe instead of making me play a guessing game, why don’t you just _tell_ me?”

Tugging at his hair, Casey began to pace around the room, making sure to avoid the bookcase and the spare tools still on the floor. “Rubbish, April. They survive on _rubbish._ Don’t look at me like that, I watched them go digging through a bin and then we went back to the lair and they ate the crap they pulled out of it. Can you believe that?”

Dropping her hands to her sides, April seemed to soften a little bit and she looked at Casey like she had never seen him before. “I mean… yeah, I sort of can. They live in the sewer. Nobody really knows they exist. I mean, they do, but not _really_. I haven’t seen it but I’ve sort of assumed… that maybe they don’t get the freshest food.”

“You _knew_ and haven’t done anything?” Casey sounded aghast to his own ears and he winced at the expression that flashed across April’s face for a split second.

“I mean, I buy them takeout when I have the money and help them out when I can but it’s not like I can buy them a condo and pay all their bills,” April snapped and turned away from Casey, but he grabbed her elbow and spun her back around.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything to me?” Casey asked and April yanked her hand away. He let her do it.

Frowning, April took a step back but didn’t move any further away, which Casey took as a good sign. “I just assumed you knew. I mean, where else could you have expected mutant turtles to get enough food to sustain them?” She didn’t sound angry any more, which Casey was glad. “I mean, they don’t eat every night anyway, but they do when they get the chance. I’ve tried to have them over for dinner a few times, but they always refuse, and the one time they actually came over they broke my bathtub and put a shell-sized hole in the wall.”

Against his better judgement, Casey had begun to pace again in an attempt to expel some of his energy out through his feet. “April, they’re _teenagers_ and mutant turtle teenagers at that. I’ve seen how much normal teenage boys eat, and the guys should be eating 10 times as much, but they’re eating less than what a human boy would eat in a day!”

“I know, Case,” April said, and she had grown soft again, he previous fury forgotten, as if she could physically feel Casey’s distress. “But what are you going to do about it?”

It was a very good question and one Casey hadn’t actually thought of but the answer came to him straight away. “I’ll work double shifts at work,” he said. “And hell, maybe, I’ll do odd jobs for people who just need a little more help than most. I’ll buy them fresh groceries every day for the rest of my life if I have to.”

April looked sympathetic. “Casey, don’t be silly.”

In a strangely sudden burst of panic, Casey threw his arm towards the window as if the turtles in question could be seen just outside the pane of glass. “Come on April, those guys risk their lives every night to protect the people of this city, and for their efforts, they’re forced to live in the sewer and they’re not even able to get a decent meal?”

“I know where you’re coming from,” April said. “But what you’re talking about… it’s just not realistic. I’ve known them for longer than you have and I’ve seen how much food it takes for them to be full. You won’t have enough money to buy all that for them and also keep yourself alive. Believe me, I’ve _tried_.”

Defeated, Casey collapsed onto the couch and dropped his head to his hands, sinking deep into the cushions, deflated. “Then what the hell am I supposed to do, April? Because I saw them, and they ate it like drowning men searching for air, and the slop was all just _disgusting_. I don’t care what their constitution is like. _Nobody_ should have to go through that just to survive.”

Sighing sadly, April crouched down before Casey and put a gentle hand on his leg and he looked down at her through the gaps in his fingers. “I know Case, I know, but at the moment we can’t do much. But… we’ll figure it out. We’ll help them. Together.”

If he was being honest with himself, Casey wasn’t quite sure how much he believed her, but one thing he knew was that he was going to do everything in his power to fix what was broken.

(Starting with an anonymous donation of every meal from every fast-food restaurant and take-out place in a 20-kilometre radius of the nearest manhole cover to his apartment, bags filled with more food than he could feasibly carry and placed in a specific place that he knew the turtles absolutely would not miss.

Yeah, working a double shift never felt so good.)


End file.
